Is Selling on Etsy Worth It? How Much 5 Real Etsy Sellers Make

Most Etsy shops make very little. But some make a lot, and the ones below show the specific models that got them there: print on demand, digital products, and a handmade shop grown slowly over years. Here's how much each Etsy seller actually made.

Etsy print on demand income

Francisco Rivera found print on demand through a YouTube video and built an Etsy candle shop — despite not caring about candles. It brought in about $462,000 in a year and let him quit his tutoring job, working around 20 minutes a day. Starfish USA sold about 46,920 print-on-demand T-shirts through Printify between 2021 and 2024, around $17 each, for an estimated $251,700 a year — driven by matching family sets.

Etsy digital products income

One shop sells minimalist budgeting spreadsheets for about $10 each. It made its first sale in March 2023 and passed 19,000 sales about 14 months later — with only 34 listings. The estimated annual revenue is $177,000, driven by strong visuals and search-friendly titles rather than a big catalog.

Etsy side hustle to full-time

Kirstie Wang ran her Etsy shop, A Jar of Pickles, in the background of a full-time tech job for eight years before it reached six figures and she went full-time. Julie Berninger started selling bachelorette-party temporary tattoos while working as a project manager, pivoted to printables, hit six figures within a few years, and co-founded Gold City Ventures — a course business teaching Etsy digital products — now bringing in over $100,000 a month.

So, is selling on Etsy worth it?

For these sellers, yes — but notice the common threads: products that don't need to be made by hand one at a time (print on demand, digital files), a narrow niche, and years of patience. These are top Etsy sellers, not typical ones, and sales figures aren't profit after Etsy's fees and production costs.